Seminar Marketing: Using Your List

Many years back I used to promote my seminars and events through direct mail and newspaper advertising. Today, I would not even THINK of using either of those two methods of marketing. Why? Because I could possibly LOSE money. Given that I’ve never lost money on a seminar, that would kill me to have it happen.

Today, my entire methodology of promoting revolves around my own in-house list. I’ve even stopped attempting to ask others to promote my seminar to THEIR lists. Why? Because it never seems to work out. They don’t want to follow my timeframes and seem to be less than cooperative when it comes to promoting something other than their own “stuff.”

My list is everything to my seminar promotion effort. Without the list, I have no one to promote my events to.

Do you have a list? If so, you need to cultivate it properly. I just had a chance to watch the movie “Being There” with Peter Sellers for the third or fourth time the other night. In the movie, sellers is a gardner. When he is “discovered” by a slew of media folks and politicians, he turns Washington on it’s ear.

He uses examples from gardening when talking about EVERYTHING. Soon the entire DC establishment thinks he is brilliant. In fact, he’s a simpleton.

But, everything that he says in that film about attending to your garden is true about your list. It needs to be cultivated, watered, watched and nurtured. Treat your list like the valuable asset it is and you’ll be able to promote your seminars to that list for a long time.